God and the Panopticon's tower guard

[Lowpro]

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the thought experiment of Bentham's Panopticon. There's many philosophical arguments regarding it, but the main idea is that a prisoner is enclosed within a prison cell within a ring building. At the center of the ring is an omnipresent guard tower which can see each and every cell. the back side of the cell (the side facing away from the tower is backlit, so the inmates cannot see anything other than the tower itself, and the guard can see every prison inmate due to backlighting. The gist is that every prisoner can see only one thing, the guard tower, but cannot see the guard, while the guard can see every single inmate.

Now, God can be viewed much the same, and I'm thinking that, whether people are aware of the Panopticon or not, this article (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-atheists-we-distrust) brought the idea of the panopticon into my mind.

How much do you think it occurs to the religious, the nonreligious, and the purely deistic (people who don't believe in a judgmental diety) that there is a change in behavior to those who believe they are being watched by an unseen guard? Sort of the same problem as those who run a stop sign because they are consciously aware no one is around to watch them except if they are at least aware that there's cameras hidden specifically TO watch them.

EDIT: On a side note, if anyone's not read Focoult's ideas of the Panopticon I highly recommend it.

[pristerognathus]

How much do you think it occurs to the religious, the nonreligious, and the purely deistic (people who don't believe in a judgmental diety) that there is a change in behavior to those who believe they are being watched by an unseen guard? Sort of the same problem as those who run a stop sign because they are consciously aware no one is around to watch them except if they are at least aware that there's cameras hidden specifically TO watch them.

I guess you're asking do people do the right thing because it's what should be done or because they're afraid of punishment from some unseen,
uncompromising, eternally vengeful uber guard? In some respects it doesn't matter, assuming we are all agreed on what the "right thing" is, whether you do it through fear, love, laziness or pure devilment, the end result would be the right thing. Unfortunately it seems that some people do things that are not obviously "right" to many of us and will justify it through an appeal to an authority beyond, normally religious in nature but sometimes political, utopian or similar.

Of course, the problem of where do ethics spring from is a perennial . . . I'm not going to stumble across the answer tonight. If I missed the point, soz.